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The Blog
Resources for founders raising capital
Clear, practical insights on pitch decks, fundraising strategy, financial models, and what investors actually care about, written from the front lines.
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Top 10 Pitch Deck Design Agencies in 2026: An Honest Comparison
Founders search "best pitch deck design agency" every day, and almost every list that comes back is a thinly-veiled ad for whoever paid for the top slot. This one is not. We publish RunwayTeam at position one on this list because we built RunwayTeam, and if you believe your own work you say so. Every other agency on this list is a real competitor we have run alongside, lost deals to, and respect. We will tell you what each one is good at, who they are right for, and the limit
Giorgi Meskhi
7 minutes ago
Popular
Top 10 Pitch Deck Design Agencies in 2026: An Honest Comparison
Founders search "best pitch deck design agency" every day, and almost every list that comes back is a thinly-veiled ad for whoever paid for the top slot. This one is not. We publish RunwayTeam at position one on this list because we built RunwayTeam, and if you believe your own work you say so. Every other agency on this list is a real competitor we have run alongside, lost deals to, and respect. We will tell you what each one is good at, who they are right for, and the limit
Giorgi Meskhi
7 minutes ago
Why Now Slide in a Pitch Deck: Structure, Examples, and the Four Catalysts That Land
Timing is the strongest predictor of startup success. Not team, not idea, not business model. Timing. Founders who understand this build a pitch deck that names, explicitly, why the opportunity in front of them exists now and would not have existed three years ago. Most founders do not build that slide. They put a chart of market growth in its place and call it a Why Now. Investors read a market growth chart as background, not as urgency. There is a difference between "the ma
Giorgi Meskhi
Sep 19
How to Find Investors for a Startup: A Founder's Playbook for Targeted Outreach
Founders think fundraising is a numbers game. Email 400 investors, book 12 meetings, close 2 checks. It is not a numbers game. It is a targeting game. The founder who emails 60 well-researched investors gets more meetings than the founder who emails 400 cold. Not slightly more. Meaningfully more. Warm and researched outreach converts at ten to thirty times the rate of cold, generic outreach. The math on hours per meeting, on quality of conversation, and on time to close all f
Giorgi Meskhi
Sep 15
Solution Slide in a Pitch Deck: Structure, Examples, and What Investors Look For
Founders spend the most time building their solution slide. Investors spend the least time reading it. That mismatch is why most solution slides fail. The average investor spends under four minutes on a pitch deck on the first pass. Problem and solution together get roughly 30 seconds. In that window, one thing has to land: what you built, and why it works when other approaches have not. Anything beyond that is noise. The strongest solution slides are the shortest. Three line
Giorgi Meskhi
Sep 3
AI Startup Pitch Deck: Structure, Slides, and What Investors Actually Fund in 2026
In Q1 2026, an AI foundational model startup raised its Series A at a median valuation of $300 million. A non-AI startup at the same stage raised at $55 million, according to Carta. Same round. Same paperwork. A more than five-times gap. We covered why in our guide to startup valuation. That gap is not free money. It is the market pricing in scarcity, defensibility, and a belief that a small number of AI companies will define the next decade of software. Which means the bar f
Giorgi Meskhi
Aug 29
Venture Debt Explained: What It Costs Founders and When It Makes Sense
US venture debt volume hit a new record in 2025, surpassing 2024’s $61.1 billion high, according to PitchBook. Deal count fell 19% at the same time. Fewer deals, much larger checks. AI infrastructure companies are pulling billion-dollar facilities. The average deal size has more than doubled since 2020. That headline number does not tell the story most founders need to hear. Venture debt is not just a late-stage instrument for AI unicorns. It is available to post-seed and Ser
Giorgi Meskhi
Aug 14
SAFE Note vs. Convertible Note: What They Are, How They Differ, and Which to Use
In Q1 2026, convertible notes hit a record low of just 7% of US pre-seed rounds, according to Carta’s State of Pre-Seed Q1 2026. SAFEs took the other 93%. That is not a close debate. For most US founders raising before a priced round, the instrument question has largely been settled by the market. But understanding why SAFEs won - and the specific situations where a convertible note still makes sense - is what separates a founder who signs the right instrument from one who si
Giorgi Meskhi
Aug 9
Cap Table Explained: What It Is, How to Read It, and What Investors Look For
By the time a founding team raises a seed round, they retain a median of 56% of their fully diluted equity. By the time they close a Series A, that figure drops to 36%, according to Carta’s Founder Ownership Report 2026. That is 14 percentage points of founder ownership lost across two rounds. And most founders cannot tell you, round by round, exactly where it went. The cap table is the document that makes that math visible. Every share issued, every option granted, every inv
Giorgi Meskhi
Aug 5
Startup Valuation: How Investors Set the Number - and How to Justify Yours
In Q1 2026, an AI foundational model startup raised its Series A at a median valuation of $300 million. A non-AI startup at the exact same stage raised at $55 million, according to Carta’s latest State of Private Markets report. Same round. Same paperwork. A more than five-times gap in startup valuation. That gap is the clearest proof of something we tell every founder who walks into RunwayTeam: valuation isn’t calculated. It’s negotiated. And if you don’t understand how to
Giorgi Meskhi
Aug 1
Series D Funding: What $50M+ Rounds Actually Require
You've raised Series A. Scaled through B. Survived C. Now the conversation is turning to Series D - and the first thing most founders discover is that everything they've learned about fundraising needs recalibrating. The investor types are different. The due diligence is deeper. The narrative your deck needs to tell has nothing to do with potential and everything to do with proof. This guide covers what Series D funding is, what investors scrutinize at this stage, and how to
Giorgi Meskhi
Jul 28
Series C Pitch Deck: The Rebuild Most Founders Skip
You are in the top 1% of founders who have ever started a company. Only 1% of startups globally reach Series C. You have proven growth, built a team, and generated real revenue. The deck that got you here is not the deck that will close this round. At Series C, the investor base changes. The evaluation criteria shift. PE firms, hedge funds, and crossover funds often join the cap table alongside your traditional VCs - and they apply a fundamentally different analytical lens. T
Giorgi Meskhi
Jul 21
Why Most Series B Pitch Decks Still Read Like a Series A (And How to Fix That)
Seed investors buy a hypothesis. Series A investors buy a machine. Series B investors buy a market position. Most founders nail the first two transitions. The third one is where rounds quietly die. The mistake is rarely due to bad metrics. It is a deck that still tells a growth story when the investor across the table wants a dominance story. Growth is expected at Series B - it is the floor, not the ceiling. What separates funded decks from rejected ones at this stage is evid
Giorgi Meskhi
Jun 30
Series A Pitch Deck: Structure, Metrics, and Examples (2026)
A seed deck asks investors to believe in a hypothesis. A Series A deck asks them to believe in a machine - a business that already works, already retains, and is ready to scale with capital. Those are two different arguments, and they require two different documents. Series A investors read decks differently from seed investors. They are not evaluating potential. They are evaluating proof: proof that the sales motion is repeatable, that customers stay and expand, and that the
Giorgi Meskhi
Jun 22
How to Raise Seed Funding: The Deck, Model, and Mistakes That Decide Rounds
Seed investors approach a pitch differently from pre-seed angels and Series A funds. They are not backing a proven growth engine. They are making a specific bet on a specific team, a specific market, and a specific stage of evidence - and they are looking for a deck and financial model that makes that bet legible. If the materials do not address those dimensions precisely, the conversation ends before the business gets a fair hearing. This guide explains how to raise seed fun
Giorgi Meskhi
Jun 16
What Is Pre-Seed Funding - and Are You Ready to Raise?
You have an idea. Maybe a rough prototype. You've been talking to potential users, and the problem you're solving is real. But you have no revenue, no product in the market, and possibly no co-founder yet. You keep hearing about pre-seed funding, but you're not sure whether you qualify, what investors actually want to see, or how the whole process works. This guide answers all of that. We'll cover what pre-seed funding is, how it differs from other early-stage rounds, what in
Giorgi Meskhi
Jun 9
How to Build a Gaming Pitch Deck That Actually Raises Capital
If you are a game developer looking to pitch a publisher - Steam, Xbox Game Studios, Devolver Digital, or a similar partner - this guide is not for you. The developer-to-publisher pitch is a different exercise with different slides, different priorities, and different logic. This guide is for gaming startup founders raising capital from venture capital firms and angel investors. That distinction matters because the two audiences want completely different things. A publisher w
Giorgi Meskhi
Jun 2
B2B SaaS Pitch Deck: How to Build One in 2026
B2B SaaS investors read decks differently from general startup investors. They are not just evaluating market size and growth potential. They are looking for ICP precision, a GTM motion aligned with the ACV, and a metrics layer that demonstrates the business compounds. If the deck does not clearly address those dimensions, the meeting ends before the product gets a fair hearing. This guide explains how to build a B2B SaaS pitch deck that holds up in real investor conversation
Giorgi Meskhi
May 27
Crypto Pitch Deck: How to Raise Capital for a Web3 Startup (2026 Guide)
Most crypto founders are not rejected because the technology is weak. They are rejected because the deck fails to make a token-based business legible to the people writing the cheques. Crypto VCs and Web3 angels read decks differently from standard startup investors. They are not just evaluating market size and growth potential. They are underwriting token design, regulatory exposure, and on-chain evidence. If the deck does not clearly address those dimensions, the meeting en
Giorgi Meskhi
May 20
Mobile App Pitch Deck: The 12 Slides Investors Expect (2026 Guide)
Investors see dozens of app pitches every quarter. The ones that move forward share a specific quality: clarity. Clarity on the problem, the product, the numbers, and the people. Not beautiful slides. Not a feature list. Clarity. This guide covers what goes into a mobile app pitch deck that actually works in investor conversations, not just one that looks good on screen. It covers the right slide structure, what investors read on each slide, the mistakes that quietly kill app
Giorgi Meskhi
May 13
EdTech Pitch Deck: A Slide-by-Slide Guide for Education Startups
EdTech is not a forgiving vertical for fundraising right now. After the 2021 boom, investor appetite contracted sharply. Platforms that scaled fast on pandemic tailwinds lost traction when schools returned to normal budgets. By 2025, funding recovered - but the bar rose permanently. Capital is concentrating in a smaller number of deals. Average funding amounts climbed to $7.8M, meaning investors are choosier, not more generous. Most EdTech founders build pitch decks that
Giorgi Meskhi
May 7
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